Essay

"The relationship between media and audience is changing drastically" discuss

Media Ecology focuses on media as environments and environments as media, with an explicit concern for their evolution, effects and forms. The main point about media ecology is that the medium that the media is consumed on is more important in affecting society than the actual media itself. The introduction of web 2.0 allows feedback and interaction in a way that wasn't possible until now, word of mouth was the only way to find out if a movie was worth their time but now you can search up reviews to decide if the movie is worth it, as well as the ability to comment on social media.

Clay Shirky came up with the end of audience theory where he stated that there isn't a passive audience anymore who will sit and just soak in information, the audience has evolved into an active audience where consumers are now also becoming producers (Prosumers), this is due to the impact of web 2.0 and the availability of technology, this allowed apps such as YouTube and TikTok which have millions of people making content everyday with everyday items such as a smartphone. With new apps and services coming out everyday there are endless streams of content to be enjoyed and shared.

Henry Jenkins' fandom theory states fans enjoy media so much that they create content based upon it and form communities known as fandoms. An example comes from Disney plus' Mandalorian, where a fan remade a scene from the popular TV series because he didn't like the way the scene went, he ended up doing such a good job that he has been brought into the LucasFilm production team. Another example is from Netflix's Stranger Things where a large fandom of pre-teens was reposting clips from the show as well as their own edits eventually accounts from this fandom began to be banned as the clips they uploaded were copyright infringements known under Article 13.

Over the years the way blockbuster films have been distributed has changed, the cinemas aren't the only place where an audience can view the premiere of the movie, in July 2021 marvel released their latest superhero moving Black Widow starring Scarlette Johansson. The drama came when she realised that the movie wasn't only being released in cinemas but on Disney's SVOD (Streaming Video on Demand) Disney+, this was a problem as in her contract her pay was a certain percentage of cinema profits but since it wasn't the only place it could be viewed her pay was a lot less than she was expected leading to her launching a law suite against Disney.

Fragmentation is when media is spread across countless mediums such as linear TV, Streaming services (SVOD) and social media platforms. This has allows a wider influence on what audiences are consuming compared to how they used to and links to the audience theory in which audiences aren't just being spoon fed information from one place, now they can have multiple opinions and do their own research on certain topics, this takes power away from large media influences and can also so have its negative effects such as false information. Studies have shown that almost 45% of teens say that they are always online and a further 31% of teens insist that social media has a positive effect on them. This shows that web 2.0 and social media help shape audience ideas. Cinema popularity is slowly decreasing as many other options for watching movies become available, however, 14% of people agree that they go to the cinemas one or more times a month and a further 46% said they go at least one time per year. This shows that people still enjoy the feeling of going to the cinemas to watch a new movie that has come out even though there are so many other options available for them to watch it on. One of these options being illegal websites which pirate movies and allow people to watch them for free. According to a 2020 study on piracy, pirated material was viewed over 230 billion times, Hollywood loses between 29.2 to 70.1 billion dollars every year due to piracy. More than 80% of global online piracy is due to illegal streaming services, this means that production companies are missing out on billions of dollars of what would have been potential revenue. Kim Dotcom was an example of someone who profited heavily of websites that allowed for pirated material to be shown he accumulated over $200 million dollars from the websites of which he has less than 10% remaining after many legal battles.

The top three SVOD websites are Netflix (208 million users), Amazon Prime Video (200 million users) and Disney+ (103 million users) although Disney+ was only released on November 2019 making it less than 2 years old and having almost half of Netflix' users, in comparison Netflix has been a VOD service since 2007 meaning it is nearing 14 years of streaming. Over this time they have established themselves as the top streaming service and gained the largest active user base however Disney now owns many more production companies such as MARVEL, this lead to all marvel tv shows and movies being taken off Netflix this angered a lot of fans as some people were looking forward to new episodes of the Marvel spin off series that were being showed on Netflix that ultimately got discontinued.

In conclusion the relationships between audience and media has changed a lot largely thanks to the invention and introduction of web 2.0 and the availability of new and faster technology that can take advantage of web 2.0 is ways that were never thought possible, social media has changed audiences from being more conservative to sharing all their opinions and thoughts in ways like never before. Uploading, downloading and sharing content is very easy and all thanks to web 2.0, without it traditional ways of communication and media being spread would still be the main way to get information and watch content.